Is your cable installer providing you with data cabling testing and results on completion?
What is Data Cabling Testing?
Data Cabling Testing can be done in many ways from multimeters, continuity testers and through to the required industry standard cable certification testers.
Industry testers are in excess of £5000.00 per tester so if you are looking for a professionally installed data cabling system you should be insisting on test results with one of these testers.
The Fluke DSX is the industry leading tester and is the one that we use for our testing
What is a fluke test report?
Fluke is the leading manufacturer of test equipment for data cabling. In addition there are a few other manufacturers who produce certified test equipment but largely you will see test results in a fluke format from a fluke tester
Furthermore the test result will test many standards in one push of a button and will only produce a “Pass” mark if all those standards are met. These include tests for distance, interference, signal loss, echos on the link and many others
Test results for a Data cable installation by NM Cabling
How do you test a Cat6 cable (or any other type of structured cabling)?
Once the data wiring link is installed and termination the cable certification tester can be plugged in both ends and tested from the main unit to the remote and back again. In addition the above sample report shows how the test report looks. It also shows how the report contains charts and graphs to ensure certain standard limits are met
These reports are the only way to ensure our cabling has been installed to standard and correctly
Key Questions regarding data cabling testing
Pre-Installation
- Request in advance examples of previous project test results
- Confirm a Fluke or similar tester will be used
Post Installation
- Does the test result in the top corner show a pass?
- Can you be provided results on hard copy and electronic copy?
- Make sure you get a test result for each individual cable
- Ensure you have the list of all cables
- Check cable lengths are all unique lengths – This avoids being supplied with 1 cable tested many times)
Without full test results you will not know if the system is:
- Installed correctly for you
- Working to your required standards
- Capable of running efficiently and supporting all your different types of technology